If you want to start a football debate, simply mention Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts and take a stance, one way or the other. Either he’s great or he’s not. After that, just step back and watch the fireworks.
No player in the NFL right now is as big of a talking point in regards to their legacy as Hurts, who has led the Eagles to 2 Super Bowl appearances in the last 3 years, including a blowout win over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX on February 9.
Headed into his sixth NFL season, Hurts and his greatness are still somehow up for debate. That’s despite playing arguably the 2 best games of his career in those 2 Super Bowls and taking home Super Bowl MVP honors in February.
That’s why Bleacher Report’s Brad Gagnon singled Hurts out as the NFL’s “Most Polarizing Player” headed into 2025.
“You have to look beyond the traditional raw passing numbers,” Gagnon wrote on July 18. “Hurts has proved to be a clutch playmaker, his arm often still gets the job done and his remarkable productivity as a rusher makes up for the odd failure through the air.”
Whatever critiques of Hurts are out there, the main thing he does is win. Since taking over as the starting quarterback for the Eagles late in the 2020 season, he’s 46-20 as a starter. That includes going 9-10 as the starter in his first 2 seasons.
Few QBs As Mentally Tough as Hurts, Ever
While the debate over where Hurts lands in the hierarchy of NFL quarterbacks will probably continue as long as his career does, you will probably never find another quarterback who is as mentally tough.
For Hurts, the son of a Texas high school football coach, a lot of that goes back to a moment that would have broken most quarterbacks — when he was benched at halftime of the College Football Playoff National Championship game and watched his backup, current Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, rally Alabama to a win over SEC rival Georgia in overtime.
Hurts, who was 23-1 as the starter and named SEC Offensive Player of the Year before he was benched, stayed at Alabama as Tagovailoa’s backup for another season.
He joined Oklahoma as a graduate transfer in 2019, where he led the Sooners to the College Football Playoff semifinals, was named an All-American and taken by the Eagles in the second round (No. 53 overall) of the 2020 NFL draft.
Hurts Barely Cracked Top 10 in ESPN Rankings
If Hurts was looking for any extra motivation headed into the season, he got a good heaping of it when ESPN released its annual ranking of the Top 10 NFL quarterbacks as voted on by NFL executives and other personnel.
Hurts, who didn’t receive a vote above the No. 6 spot, came in at No. 9 on the list.
That put him behind the quarterback he outdueled in the Super Bowl in Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes (No. 1), behind 2 other quarterbacks he beat in the playoffs in Washington’s Jayden Daniels (No. 5) and Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford (No. 6), and behind a quarterback who didn’t even make the playoffs the last 2 years in Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow (No. 3).
